Story of a permaculture allotment - part 1

Good afternoon from England,

Here is a photograph of the full-sized (c. 400 m^2) allotment plot in England, just after I had the privilege to take it on in Aug 2013.  

In digging over the plot, I discovered a huge nest of spiders which I left as near-undisturbed as possible, many ants nests (I think black, red & ginger species of ant), plus woodland forget-me-nots, English poppies, duckwheat, some variety strawberry plants that had runnered in from a neighbouring plot, and a young purple butterfly bush (originally from Sichuan & Hubei China, and Japan).

I seeded fully half the plot with alfafa, trefoils & vetches.  But I think due to birds & slugs only about 2 dozen plants succeeded from all those hundreds of grams of seeds!

Image description: In the back corner, a small blue shed with a little ivy growing on the roof.  In front, c. 400 m^2 of ground with rich topsoil nearly 1 m deep, overgrown with about 18 months of clumping & creeping grasses, docken, thistles, common & woodland bindweed, and some brambles at the southern edge.

Looks like a big field of potential. 1m of topsoil though, that's spectacular.

That's a nice sized allotment.  Much bigger than we get in the cities here.

I like your covercrop mix.  

Beautiful photo, AC! I can imagine walking through it, finding all sorts of treasures around each corner.

Here's a picture of the plot taken the same summer - possibly even the same August day - from the South-East.   The photo I posted first is taken more facing West.

You can see a sad crop of abandoned potatoes which the family had tried raising that Summer.  Also of interest is the red flower in the middle distance, an English poppy.  The thicket in front of the shed was later mostly cleared by the Allotments Association to create a wheelchair accessible mini-plot.  But three mysterious plum trees also emerged from that thicket, just before you get to the shed.  I'm picking a good crop of golden plums from those trees this year.

Ac, thanks for sharing.

I see so much potential there.  I know it will take time to make things happen.

I am looking forward to seeing your plans and progress.

Possibly also a bit of `fat hen` going to seed in there.

Here`s a link to the plum discussion.